Talk:Constitution of May 3, 1791

I have received email from the www.polishconstitution.org site (from Andrzej Batorski) regarding my question if I can use their material on Wiki(and he kindly writes: I have no problem releasing it, but I did not translate it and I don't know the source of this translation. All other content on the web site is original, written by my wife, and can be used without limitations. The only thing I ask is to give proper credit when publishing any information coming form www.polishconstitution.org. If you think my credit mention should be changed, please do so, I hope it is sufficent.

Also, I have removed 'przypisy' (notes) from polish source, as they are obviously much later then the source text. --Piotrus 18:53, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for paying attention to the copyright issues. Many other things are enterred in Wikisource without taking that into account, and it can be a lot of work to research the problem. The English text of the constitution should be OK; I have found copies of some English translation at several sites, but nobody seems to mention the translator, or when he lived. This constitution appears to have historical significance that extends well beyond the borders of Poland, so it is reasonable to assume that there is at least some version that has gone into the public domain at some time in the last 213 years.

The one change that I would suggest is to put the language versions on separate pages. Eclecticology 19:55, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Well, somebody working on a Polish Wikipedia article has created a second version of this (only in Polish) at Konstytucja 3 Maja so do we merge them (delete one) or split by language version? --Piotrus 19:29, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Update. I was told: "Wikisource's English translation of the Constitution of May 3, 1791, appeared in 1985 (without copyright notice) under the imprint of the Defense Language Institute, at the Presidio of Monterey, in California. As the Defense Language Institute is a Federal institution, the translation is in public domain. The publication appears in the Stanford University Libraries online catalog at [1]." This does seem clear, and my concerns about the source and license are now addressed. --Piotrus (talk) 16:13, 17 July 2011 (UTC)